[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
"Slay it!" ordered the High Moo, coming to his feet. But a single hooded eye
peered out in a crack between falling clay bits, and the guards let out a
combined screech and fled the roof.
One of them had dropped a war club, and the High Moo dived to recover it.
He noticed that the stairwell was dark. There were no signs of the other
Page 42
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
guards, or the royal priest, Teihotu. He returned to the roof. The thing was
free of its prison now.
It was, as he knew it would be, an octopus. It was black, and the moon was
reflected on his shiny hide. It flopped its tentacles weakly in the unfamiliar
environment. The greater portion of the seawater had flowed into a drainage
channel cut into the roof, and the octopus began to slide along it, desperate
to cling to its true element.
The High Moo pounced as he slipped toward the roofs edge. He mashed one
tentacle into jelly. Then, bringing the club up again, he struck the mortal
blow.
It fell on water.
The octopus had slipped over the parapet with boneless fluidity. It struck the
ground below with a wet smack that caused the hairs on the back of the High
Moo's head to stand up.
Down in the courtyard, the royal priest came running from the palace,
accompanied by the other guards-the two who had not run away.
"There!" cried the High Moo. "Below me. Kill it!"
"Do as your king bids," ordered the royal priest. And the two guards fell upon
the octopus. They beat it into submission. A pulpy pop told that its boneless
head had burst. They crushed the tentacles methodically. When they stood back
after many more blows than were needed, the octopus was a black viscous puddle
that did not move.
"The Enemy of Life is no more," said the royal priest solemnly.
"No," called down the High Moo wearily. "Only one of his children sent as a
warning to me that nowhere am I safe, and no one may I trust, not even those
closest to me."
"But, your highness-"
"Hold your tongue," said the High Moo. "You guards return to your stations.
You, priest, find the guards who ran and punish them. I care not how you do
it, just so that it is done. The sun comes up soon, and I will be here to see
it rise." Then under his breath he added, "And the Sun God willing, it will
bring my daughter, who alone is my only hope."
Chapter 11
Dr. Harold W. Smith settled behind his shabby oak desk. It was Saturday and
his secretary was not at her desk in the reception area. That meant Smith
would not be interrupted. He had told the lobby guard that unless the missing
patient, Gilbert Grumley, who still had not been found, came to light,
officially he was not on the premises. Smith pressed the concealed stud that
brought the terminal linked to hidden basement computers rising from a recess
in his desk. It clicked into place like an obedient robot. Its glass face
stared at him blankly.
He keyed in the password for the day. When the system was up and running,
Smith began to key in a series of questions.
The problem was a simple one: to discover the identity of the new owner of the
house next to his own. That information could not be found in Smith's data
base, of course. Even after over twenty years of methodically collecting
data-some gathered from anonymous field workers who believed they were really
feeding their monthly reports to the CIA or the FBI or even the IRS, and some
of it siphoned off America's burgeoning computer networksthere was just too
much raw data out there, much of it trivia.
Ordinarily a change in home ownership would also be too trivial to note. Not
this time. This time the strangeness was too close to home. Smith knew he was
not being paranoid in suspecting the mystery of the empty house next to his
own was a possible CURE problem. CURE security had been breached before. Even
the Folcroft cover, as innocuous as it was, had nearly been compromised, most
recently by a fluke of the last presidential campaign. That problem proved
manageable, but it was not beyond the realm of possibility that this could be
fallout from that incident. A leak or a slip of the tongue during the pressure
of the campaign.
A pattern was forming. First the mysteriously missing patient. Then the empty
Page 43
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
house whose owner's face had triggered a memory in Mrs. Smith's mind.
Something was going on.
It was time to put a name to that owner, and if he proved to be a security
threat, then Harold Smith must eliminate him.
Smith logged onto the computer records at the Westchester County Registry of
Deeds. The password was easy for a man as computer-skilled as Smith to break.
It was simply a date code. He began paging through recent files.
After twenty minutes he was forced to admit defeat. There was no record of the
transaction. That meant one of two things: either the transaction had not yet
been filed in the computer-which was reasonable, given the time frame-or the
transaction might have been conducted illegally.
Before he could jump to that last damning conclusion, Smith would have to pay
a call on the Registry of Deeds himself. If the house had changed hands
legally, their books would contain the answer he sought.
Chapter 12
"It is your turn at the rudder, Remo," laughed the Low Moo, Dolla-Dree. Just
as Remo reached for it, she threw the tiller to one side. The Jonah Ark heeled
sharply and cut away from the wind. Remo grabbed it and hauled back. The ship
righted itself.
The Low Moo giggled, shaking her lustrous hair. It hung long and free. Remo
noticed a natural wave.
"Very cute," he said dryly. "Sit with me?"
"Maybe," she said coquettishly.
"Please?" Remo said. He had to say it twice before he pronounced the Moovian
word for "please" correctly.
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]